James Potter And The Morrigan Web (66 page)

“They have the Floo network, you dolt!” Lucia exclaimed, unable to stop herself. “And Portkeys! And Disapparation!” She glanced back at James. “That’s a real thing, right? Disapparation?”

“Er,” James stammered. “Er, yeah. But… like… none of us knows how to do it yet.”

“Speak for yourself,” Scorpius muttered.

Rose shook her head impatiently. “Regardless, we really
should
be getting back. You can follow us out if you like, but don’t you dare get caught with us. It’d mean more trouble for us than either of you are worth.”

Comstock grunted his agreement and sullenly followed as Rose and Scorpius struck off once again, heading out of the village.

“I didn’t mean to overhear your conversation,” Lucia said apologetically, sidling next to James as they neared the forest. “Morton wanted to wait for you in the alley across the street, but I couldn’t resist getting a peek inside Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.”

James shrugged. “Was it everything you’d hoped?”

“Actually,” Lucia frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure it was.” She glanced aside at him guiltily, and added, “I mean, it was great and all. If I had any wizarding money I definitely would have bought something. But after imagining it for so long, it was… well… sort of…” She fluttered her hands vaguely, “normal? I guess?”

“You expected something different?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Lucia covered her face with both hands for a moment. When she lowered them, she struggled to compose herself. “I’m not like Morton. He’s got about as much imagination as a brick. My problem is that I have, maybe, just a bit
too much
imagination. It’s nobody’s fault that things sometimes don’t live up to what I imagine.”

James nodded. “I guess I can understand that.”

Lucia glanced aside at him gratefully as they angled into the dense shadows of the forest path. “Sometimes it’s a
good
thing that things turn out to be more normal than I expect. I mean look at us! Here I am walking along with-- I can barely bring myself to say it!-- the son of Harry Potter!” She said the name with such reverence that James couldn’t help grinning aside at her. “But you’re not at all too much or anything!” She went on quickly. “I can talk to you! You’re totally normal, just a real, everyday person who happens to be the son of… of…!”

James nodded, his grin turning wry. “I know, I know. Believe me, it hasn’t always been fun. But yeah, we’re still just a normal family, with normal problems and stuff.”

“Oh, I doubt that!” Lucia enthused. “But still, it’s so cool that you would say that.”

James blinked at her, still smiling vaguely. “I guess so.”

They walked for awhile in silence, following the darkening silhouettes of Morton Comstock, Rose and Scorpius. The forest spread away in all directions, falling into gloom as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Overhead, wind threaded through the tree branches, rattling them and pushing a ceiling of low, dense clouds.

“So,” Lucia asked, dropping her voice slightly. “Is it really true that some people… er… think that he’s coming back?”

James glanced aside at Lucia in the dimness. “You mean Dumbledore?”

She nodded, her eyes bright with interest. “A lot of my friends never believed that he really died. They just couldn’t accept it, thought that he faked it somehow. Or that the phoenix symbol that flew overhead at his funeral somehow meant he was going to come back to life. That’s what phoenixes do after all, isn’t it? But, of course, we all just thought they were stories. Now that I know Dumbledore was a real person… well, I guess even in the wizarding world, dead is dead. Right?”

James hesitated before answering. Lucia drew a quick breath and went on, warming to the subject.

“But even when I thought all of this was just a story, I never believed Dumbledore would come back. Not the way my friends thought he would. J. K. Row-- er!” She caught herself and smiled guiltily at James. “Er, I mean Professor Revalvier… she would never pull any cheap trick like that, bringing back a character we all thought had really died. Even if the readers really wanted it. It would seem… cheap, somehow. But do you want to know what
I
always thought?” This last she asked in a hushed voice, caught between embarrassment and excitement. Her dark eyes glimmered in the twilight. “I always thought Dumbledore would come back as a
ghost
.”

A sudden wind whipped past the five students, whickering in the trees and carrying dead leaves into the air like startled birds. James wished they hadn’t allowed Rose, Scorpius and Comstock to get so far ahead.

“It would make sense, don’t you think?” Lucia asked, ignoring the quickening wind and dark. “He died so suddenly, with so much left to do. That’s what makes ghosts, right? Unfinished business? And I’ll tell you something else…” She leaned close to James and lowered her voice to a secretive whisper. “I think he’d come back
angry
.”

James nearly stumbled on the path. He turned toward Lucia, strangely dismayed at what she had said. She blinked at the expression on his face and straightened.

A moment later, both of them bumped straight into Scorpius and Rose, who had stopped on the path.

“Why are we stopping?” Comstock asked impatiently from several paces ahead.

“Shh!” Rose hissed, raising a hand. “Voices.”

James recovered himself from his collision with Rose and took a step back, listening hard. All he could hear was the rustle of the wind high in the trees and the whicker of dead leaves skirling along the path. And then, in a lull between gusts, there it was: a low mutter, a voice in the directionless distance.

“Other students coming back from Hogsmeade?” James asked querulously. “Maybe it’s even Albus and his Slytherin mates. They could be playing a trick on us.”

“That’s an adult,” Scorpius said, shaking his head slowly. “A man.”

“I can’t understand what he’s saying,” Rose whispered, frowning with concentration.

James shivered as the wind threaded through his hair again. “Why can’t we ever come back from Hogsmeade without having some stupid adventure?”

“Shh!” Rose shushed him again.

But the voice seemed to have drifted away. Silence filled the lulls between windy gusts. James glanced around for some sign of the speaker. The forest seemed suddenly alive with subtle motion; rattling branches, dancing tall grass, waving bushes and vines.

“Over there!” Lucia suddenly proclaimed in a small, strained voice. She pointed into a dense thicket of trees.

“What?” Rose asked, dropping her own voice to a harsh whisper.

Lucia shook her head. “Something moved. Someone walking along, I think. There was a flutter of robes. It’s… it’s gone now.”

Scorpius sighed briskly. “Come on, let’s get back. There’s nothing in these woods to be afraid of.”

“Except the giant spiders,” Lucia squeaked.

“There’re hardly any of them left,” Rose said reassuringly.

“And the centaurs?” Lucia suggested.

Rose nodded consideringly. “Plenty of those still.”

Not to mention the trees,
James thought, but didn’t say. Since Merlin’s return, many of the spirits of the trees-- the dryads-- had awoken, and not all of them, James knew from experience, were especially friendly. He glanced up at the creaking, moaning limbs high overhead. Too bad Merlin was no longer here to ward them away, to keep their age-old wildness in check.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, James saw it as well: a flutter of robes, the suggestion of a swift, silent pace cutting through the densest part of the forest. He whipped his head toward it, but it was already gone.

“Lucia’s right,” he announced quietly. There’s someone over there. On our right.”

Scorpius paused mid-step. James saw that he had his wand in his hand. He fingered it speculatively. A moment later, the blond boy stalked off the path, pushing through the weeds and brush.

“Where’s
he
going?” Comstock demanded.

“Scorpius!” Rose called nervously. A moment later, she squared her shoulders, whipped out her own wand, and trotted after him.

“This is ridiculous,” James grumbled in exasperation. To Lucia he said, “Stay on the path. We’ll be back in a minute.”

“No chance!” Lucia cried, jumping to follow James as he dodged into the trees. “I’m not standing there in the open with some… some
thing
wandering around out there! I’ll stick by the people with the wands, thanks very much!”

“Hurry it up, you lot,” Comstock called in an annoyed voice.

James ducked through the brush, catching up to Rose and Scorpius with Lucia following close behind. Fortunately, the increasing wind filled the entire forest with a cacophony of creaking limbs, shushing leaves, and clattering branches, covering the noise of their tromp through the underbrush. And sure enough, after only a few hundred feet they saw the figure. It crested a low hill ahead of them, flitting calmly through the trees, its cloak fluttering behind, it’s peaked hat bent rakishly in the wind.

Lucia froze in place at the sight of it. “Is it a ghost?” she begged, her voice reduced to a terrified rasp.

James shook his head, but he couldn’t truly be sure.

“Whoever or whatever it is,” Scorpius said, forging ahead brazenly. “They’re heading towards Hogwarts.”

Rose nodded. “But off the main path. They don’t want to be seen.”

“Scorpius!” James called as the boy trotted forward. “What are you going to do if you catch him? Stop him and demand to know what he’s up to, sneaking around in the Forbidden Forest on a stormy night?”

Scorpius glanced back for a moment, meeting James’ eyes consideringly. “I suppose that’s exactly what I’ll do,” he nodded.

Standing between them, Rose looked from Scorpius to James, her expression tense. After a moment, James nodded.

Lucia grabbed James’ arm and giggled nervously. “I guess this is pretty exciting, isn’t it?”

Together, the four broke into a run, threading noisily through the valley and up the crest of the hill. James saw the glittering lights of the castle emerge through the trees as they thrashed forward, dodging low branches and jumping over mossy logs. Scorpius reached the crest of the hill first. James saw him as only a dark shape against the dusky sky, stumbling between the trees where they had last spied the skulking figure. A moment later, Scorpius’ silhouette dipped away. Rose followed, dropping over what seemed to be a rocky ledge. James clambered after her, Lucia still gripping his arm tightly, panting next to him.

The hill ended in a steep slope, leading James and Lucia down a narrow, crooked path into darkness. At the bottom, they ran into Scorpius and Rose, who had lit their wands against the nearly impenetrable shadows.

“Where is he?” James asked, between panting breaths.

Scorpius shook his head, raising his wand higher. A squat, pale structure glowed faintly ahead, surrounded by dense trees but illuminated by the magical light. Silently, the four students crept toward it. James held his breath. The structure was a like a tiny cottage made of perfect slabs of white marble, flat on top, set like a jewel in a neatly trimmed lawn. Beyond the structure the woods parted, revealing the dark face of the lake and a panorama of drifting clouds. Huddled together, the four circled the structure, moving silently onto its broad, flat lawn.

Scorpius’ wand light illuminated a copper door, aged to a dull green, set with a single, thick window. Over the door, engraved on a stone slab that stretched across the breadth of the structure, was an inscription:

ALBUS PERCIVAL WULFRIC BRIAN DUMBLEDORE

“It’s his tomb,” Lucia breathed. “The White Tomb!”

Scorpius turned away and shone his wand all around the immaculate lawn, the framing trees, the dark waves of the lake. “Gone,” he proclaimed in an annoyed voice. “Whoever it was, they aren’t here.”

Rose moved alongside James and shook her head. “This is totally creepy,” she said in a low, annoyed voice.

Lucia nodded her agreement.

“HEYY!” a voice suddenly called, echoing over the hill behind the tomb. Even through the windy dark and the evident panic, James recognized Comstock’s voice. It rose again, thin with distance. “HEY! You lot need to come here and right quick! Don’t leave me alone with this!”

“What’s wrong with him now?” Scorpius muttered, even as he turned and began to run back toward the tomb. Rose followed, dashing into the shadow of the woods.

“We’d better go with them,” James sighed. “It’s best if we all stay togeth--”

Lucia gripped James’ arm with such sudden, painful ferocity that he startled, glancing aside at her. Her face was wide-eyed with terror, gazing mutely back toward the White Tomb. James turned back.

The tomb’s copper door was wide open, revealing a standing figure. Even in the dimness, James recognized the cloak and peaked hat of the man they had been following. Only now he could see the figure’s face: the narrow, crooked nose, the snowy beard. Stormlight glinted from the man’s half-moon spectacles as he glared back at them.

“It’s him!” Lucia quavered, raising a trembling, pointing hand. “It’s Dumbledore!”

But James knew better, even amidst the startled fear that fell over him like a shroud. It wasn’t Albus Dumbledore. Or if it was, it wasn’t
only
Albus Dumbledore.

It was Avior Dorchascathan.

Avior’s stern grey eyes met James’ over the windy distance. Lightning flashed, flooding the neat lawn and illuminating the tomb as if it was made of white fire. When darkness fell again, James blinked.

The copper door was closed, its single window black and empty. No figure stood there.

“Tell me I didn’t really see that,” Lucia asked in a high, faint voice.

James shook his head slowly. “I wish I could,” he replied, the steady wind batting his words away into the darkness. “Believe me, I really wish I could.”